Launching a Kickstarter campaign could be one of the most nerve-racking experiences of our lives. White knuckled pride is an interesting juxtaposition of emotions. And yet, we’re overwhelmingly proud of what we have accomplished.

We began the process of creating a fun children’s creative story writing game over a year ago. Mostly out of the fact that looking around, all you see are kids glued to their electronics and communicating in, what appeared to be, a language of their very own. We felt there needed to be some mechanism that brought kids together (yes, in person), sparked imagination, and conjured up creativity and conversation. As in ‘real words’ kind of conversation. And, guess what? It worked!

The past year of play-testing with hundreds of kids has been a super fun part of this project. The children continuously blow us away with their un-jaded naivete of what is possible. I mean, why couldn’t the scary lunch lady at school have a secret button on her spatula that makes the floor open to the bat cave? Or why can’t Dr. Gravity live for a million years to perfect his formula for flying even with some weird side effects? Why couldn’t there be a dude called Shamalamadingdong who lives in a magical place called Unicornlandia and flies around on a magic carpet?

Yes, content development and play-testing were the fun part. And getting the prototypes designed and made is also fun. The challenging part was creating this Kickstarter and all that goes into putting a plan together. And believe us, you must love your project because this is truly a labor of love. At least for us, it is. So what goes into the making of a Kickstarter project? Let’s just talk in general, big picture terms here.

First, there is the video. So you watch, I don’t know, maybe fifty Kickstarter videos so you get a sense of what you like and what you don’t like. Then you record and edit. And then re-record and edit. And then re-record and edit some more.

Second are the graphics vs. actual copy. What to put in graphic form and what to put in text form? In the end, you do a little of each and a lot of both. Especially when you have fun images like unicorns, sharkbearigators, and flying dragons. And then you edit and edit and edit some more.

Third are the rewards. It’s so cool that backers can pledge to help make our dream come true and get some really great rewards out of the deal! But what do you choose? How can you be super creative? Can you structure them in such a way that backers can help you start a movement? What about stretch goals?

Finally, there is the marketing and press piece. And this is what leads up to the flipping that GO switch. The list development. The Ambassador team. The social media posts. The social media ads. The marketing graphics. The Press. The Bloggers. The groups. The forums. The emails. The texts. The instant messages. The launch party. Lord, why are we having a launch party?

So the emotions are running high right now. From moment to moment we go from excitement to fear. But we agree that this white knuckled pride feels good. Especially when we know how much kids love Story Craze, the crazy story game!